David Bowie Once Crashed Carrie Fisher and Penny Marshall’s Legendary Joint Birthday Party

Left, from A.P. Images, right, by Alex J. Berliner/BEI, both from Rex/Shutterstock.

Carrie Fisher and director Penny Marshall first struck up their friendship in the late 1970s, when Fisher’s then husband, Paul Simon, and Lorne Michaels introduced them, sure they would “hit it off.” As Marshall notes in her memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, which Jezebel revisited in the wake of Fisher’s death, their matchmakers were right on the money with that prediction. Marshall, now 73, and Fisher, who died last Tuesday at 60, became so close that in 1981, they began a tradition of hosting elaborate joint birthday parties in their shared birthday month of October—soirees so popular that, one year, David Bowie and Iman were inspired to crash.

The parties became one of the go-to events in Hollywood—Marshall compares them to Vanity Fair’s Oscar parties. Guests were invited via discreet phone call; lucky attendees included longtime friends Robin Williams, Jack Nicholson, and Anjelica Huston, and later on, newer A-Listers such as Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck made the list.

“The food was a big draw,” Marshall wrote of the parties, which she said ended, due to expenses and an overwhelming crowd, after about 20 years. “Carrie’s housekeeper, Gloria, and her mother’s longtime housekeeper, Mary, made fried chicken, meatloaf, mac and cheese, and other Southern staples. Barbra Streisand wanted to hire them for a party. Carrie wouldn’t let her.”

In a 2012 interview with Fox News, Marshall told the news outlet that after she and her best friend stopped hosting their joint party, they started trying to recruit the budding A-List crowd for joint birthday engagements:

“I tried to get Marisa Tomei and the late Brittany Murphy to share a birthday party," she said. “They’re younger."

Although Tomei (who has a December 4 birthday) and Murphy (whose birthday was November 10) never took over their joint bash, it seems they would have been difficult to re-create. These elaborate parties had a brand of their own with funny women Fisher and Marshall at the helm.
Upon reflection of those early years, Marshall wrote that Fisher, who often provided running commentary on everything from books and movies to growing up with Debbie Reynolds in Hollywood, “was a one-woman show 35 years before she did one.”

Unsurprisingly, these two pals took their friendship far beyond their annual celebrations; Fisher even showed up as a guest star on Marshall’s sitcom, Laverne & Shirley, portraying a Playboy bunny. And Marshall dedicated her 2012 book to her funny friend; she included her words of thanks to Fisher just after those to her family:

“I want to thank Carrie Fisher, my friend and partner in crime for more than 30 years,” she wrote. “We’ve lasted longer than all of our marriages combined. Our crazy lives have meshed perfectly. We’ve always said it’s because we never liked the same drugs or men, but I know there’s more to it.”

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